


First Time

by nausicaa_of_phaeacia



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, No Dialogue, Post Season 01, not the happiest of fics, the hiatus is doing weird things to my writing, this is about Jemma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/pseuds/nausicaa_of_phaeacia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma between Leo and Trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Time

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't write this on my own computer, but *had* to do it, so it only exists online for now (and I couldn't really proofread it or actually take the time to write it). I apologise. Hope it still turned out okay (I really can't do something with patience and preparation for once, can I?). :)
> 
> Basically another take on "Twenty-Nine Minutes of Staying Awake".

She sits on the edge of his bed, every day, even if it's only for a few minutes. The glasses make her blink way too much; even after a few weeks, her eyes aren't really used to them yet. Skye has been a sweetheart and pointed out how nice she looks in them, even though she knows herself that they have to be too large for her delicate face. It's always with a little self-irony (irony? cynicism, rather) that she tells herself it's because she wanted to _see_ more, to see things others couldn't so she could save Fitz.  
Her former professor tells her she's discovering things nobody else has the capabilities to, that she's actually so far ahead that she'd win a bunch of science awards in a minute. Old Jemma would have jumped at the opportunity, but all she manages to give is a crooked smile (the Lord knows how she succeeded in hiding tears in general; it must be the practice, because that's all she seems to be doing whenever someone is speaking to her). It must be the lack of sleep.

Not everything is misery. There's Skye (who sometimes pops in at the most horrible times to put a mug of cocoa on her desk "to help her sleep"), there's May (who's recently started mending and bleaching Jemma's lab coat whenever something happens with it), there's Coulson (who's given her more days off than she has taken during the past five years, ever since her mother had been diagnosed with cancer), there's Koenig (whose smile, nice as it may be, must be glued to his face), and, yes, there's Trip.

Trip who invites her to dinner because he's still treating her as if she were just a woman. A pretty, intelligent, well, as he put it, _badass lady scientist_ (she _is_ flattered). He doesn't seem to expect anything from her, and yet, when he kisses her - as carefully and gently as one would put a fallen baby bird back into its mother's nest - he seems more than grateful. Even though, she realizes hours later, showering with the bedsheet still wrapped around her, it's her who should thank him. He's keeping up a frame of _normal_ for her during this madness of vials and DNA and blood tests and tubes and lab glasses and blinding lights and problems problems problems without the one solution.  
Being with him is like being on a small island with nothing but green and light and without the crazy. The only other place where she knows she's hidden a part of herself, for protection, is the shower. Five minutes of reason a day, in the morning. 

And yet, she can't put it into words. No thank-yous. Just the one kiss, just the one night in bed (and it's after a party at the Stark Tower, so it's not necessarily something she committed with a fully clear head). Maybe it's because she forgets about it. Maybe it's because she forgets herself, even though, whenever he stops by, he's anchoring her for a few minutes, making sure she isn't drowning in virtual tears (the last time she cried was when they brought Fitz; there's lots of crying in her half-lucid, five-minute dreams that wake her with that haunting feeling of suddenly being pulled backwards).

It takes months.  
Finally, she finds something, and it's so overwhelming, but suddenly, all the exhaustion she has accumulated over weeks and weeks and weeks of emptiness and scientific frenzy seems to hit her at once. The vial is still between her cramped fingers when she wakes, and the shame that scorches her from the inside makes her feel nauseous, but she runs runs runs (she's almost sure there's May right behind her) and light and glasses and desinfection gloves tube monitor injection.  
She sinks to the floor, head against the wall, eyes on Fitz. Twenty-nine minutes (on average) until possible hope. She blinks. Twenty-nine minutes in which she mustn't mustn't mustn't fall asleep. May is outside, and suddenly, the whiteness of the room makes her want to scream, too much time for uncertainty, too much emptiness to make sure she's not falling anywhere.

She's outright staring at Fitz, and after half an hour of torture, his heart rate changes, very slightly. Jemma jumps up (and weirdly misses the way her ponytail would softly hit her upper back during such a movement) to check, to double-check, to stare at the green wave. Her heart seems to mirror the movement and there's a way of adrenaline, and there's the sting of having reached the sea surface conscious while he almost died, the sting of Trip having been the gentlest kindest most decent most wonderful human around during weeks and weeks, the sting of the inability to decide while knowing a decision has to be made.

Everything seems to depend on Leo, and Leo's heart and brain activity, Leo's consciousness and ability to regain his _God_ so inexplicably dorky sometimes-stupid sometimes-adorable Limerick-loving allergic-to-strawberries loudly-snoring boyish hopeless self.  
And she realizes it's a decision she's made long before, even though she knows her heart is going to ache, for Trip and in case Leo never makes it back to being Leo, and for the smiles she's lost, because of the haircut and glasses and the labcoat that has somehow magically become a sort of second skin.

She briefly touches his wrist and leaves, and for the first time since all this started, she's able to actually look and nod at May (the good soul), and to sit down on her bed without having to tell herself all she's allowed to sleep for is one hour. And to walk up to Trip's bunk and enter without knocking. She considers kissing him, but plants a kiss on his shoulder and nuzzles at his neck and wrist instead. Finally, she looks up and smiles, and Trip looks as though his heart's just been broken but as though it's the most precious present he's gotten in a few years. And he smiles back and the best thing about it is knowing he's never going to resent her for it, that he's able to be content with what she gave him, with what she's allowed him to give her.  
"Thank you" is all she says to him, and it's the first thing she's said to him in a while, and he nods as if everything, if all this, the stuff he has done, has been the most natural thing in the world. And that's why Jemma knows the sting is legitimate, even though she is going to want to lock it away.

That night, she is going to sleep, and the next morning, it's going to be the first day she will really, truly be waiting for Fitz.  
For the first time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading. Tell me what you think. :)


End file.
